


There for You

by side_stickie_note (lost_stickie_note)



Series: Wait for Me [3]
Category: X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of a Suicide Attempt, Some angst, seungseok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-23 13:37:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20892983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_stickie_note/pseuds/side_stickie_note
Summary: [5+1] Five times Wooseok watches Seungyoun cry, and the one time he doesn't need to.[Part 3 of Wait for Me series][Part 1here][Part 2here]





	There for You

**Author's Note:**

> Here is Wooseok's POV to everything that has happened so far. ♡ Part 4 will be the conclusion (mostly Seungseok fluff). Hope you all enjoy reading this~~
> 
> A big thank you to my lovely beta readers. ♡
> 
> Any comments, kudos, and feedback are always appreciated!
> 
> Follow me on Twitter: [@sidestickienote](https://twitter.com/sidestickienote) for writing updates, randomness, or X1/kpop-related screaming, etc.

Wooseok has been by Seungyoun’s side for as long as he can remember, the two of them growing up as next door neighbors, the earliest memory of the other boy waiting at the bus stop on the first day of first grade. He’s never been able to stand seeing the other boy sad, not since the first day they met when Seungyoun cried as they boarded the bus.

\---

Wooseok hurriedly grabs as many flavors of Seungyoun’s favorite ice cream as he can from the freezer in the supermarket, impatiently waiting in line for his chance to pay, practically throwing his money in the guy’s face, not bothering to collect his change. He curses as the plastic bags bump against his knees as he bikes, Seungyoun’s house quite a bit away. But he doesn’t have his dad’s car today, and Seungyoun had obviously been in no condition to drive, the call from his best friend filled with half-garbled words and lots of sniffling. And the text afterwards. _You don’t have to come. _But he can’t imagine not being there, the sudden text about Seungyoun’s breakup coming as he was studying for his chemistry exam.

The other boy never has sweets in his house, his parents refusing to buy any, and Wooseok knows it kills Seungyoun sometimes, the other boy somehow having the hugest sweet tooth even though he swore off of them for the most part. He can tell the other boy has been crying when Seungyoun answers the door, the other boy’s eyes red and puffy.

“Are you sure you have the time to waste with me?” Seungyoun’s voice laced with sleepiness floats up to him, his best friend’s head in his lap as Wooseok plays with the other boy’s hair, only half focused on the movie, their third one since Wooseok had gotten there.

“Yeah, of course.” Wooseok murmurs. “I have plenty of time to spend with you.”

He doesn’t really.

Wooseok pulls the blanket over Seungyoun’s sleeping figure on the couch, the television still playing in the background, setting the volume on low. _That’s odd. _One of the Cho family’s photo albums is lying on the ground, flipped open a few photos clearly taken out and scattered, near the bookcase. Wooseok leans down, intending to pick up the mess and deposit the photo album back on the shelf where it belongs. It’s flipped open to the pictures from prom, and Wooseok feels a stab of sadness for Seungyoun as he sees all the ones that his friend had taken out, the two of them a happy couple back then, smiling in black and grey suits, matching green ties. He starts returning the photos to their proper spaces, slipping them back in, flipping the page.

Wooseok freezes, the picture staring up at him.

A smiling Seungyoun in a black suit, arm slung over Wooseok’s shoulder, wearing all white. There’s a slight scowl on his face, Seungyoun having pulled him closer just as the camera had gone off, causing Wooseok to jostle into the taller boy’s side. He doesn’t know why he does it, a stroke of insanity overtaking him, but Wooseok slips the photo into his pocket anyways.

He fails his chemistry exam the next day, having spent the entire night with Seungyoun instead of studying.

\---

Seungyoun is crying when he comes back to the apartment, the door to his room closed, a clear indication that he doesn’t want to see Wooseok. He spends the next half an hour in the kitchen, heating up his food and eating lunch, tense and unsettled, until he finally can’t take it anymore. A light knock on his best friend’s door, and Wooseok hears the other boy try to gather himself before speaking, his voice still wavering. “Yeah?”

“Seungyoun…are you okay?”

The pause seems to stretch on forever.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” The words come out flat, empty, and Wooseok makes a noise of frustration. “You’re not fine.” He pauses. “I’m coming in.”

A noise of disbelief arises, Wooseok jiggling the doorknob to Seungyoun’s room, clearly not budging. “You locked the damn door? Really Seungyoun? I swear, if you don’t open this right now, god he-“ The door opens, and his best friend appears, somehow seeming so much smaller than usual. “What happened?”

Wooseok ends up making soup for his best friend, Seungyoun feeling too nauseated to keep down anything else, having spent the last three hours bawling his eyes out. But while Seungyoun is sad, Wooseok is angry. Angrier than he thinks he’s ever been. Watching his best friend perched on a kitchen chair, his knees pulled up to his chest, and Seungyoun looks so small. And Wooseok is too used to having Seungyoun be large than life, overflowing with a bottomless joy.

_Am I not good enough?_

Wooseok swears he sees red. “I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

For the first time that afternoon, Seungyoun cracks a smile, his eyes brightening with amusement at Wooseok’s angry expression. “Thanks Wooseokie, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.” His best friend widens into a bigger grin. “He has like five inches on you. You don’t stand a chance.”

He clicks his chopsticks at the other boy menacingly. “You really think now is the best time to be making fun of my height? Don’t think I won’t come across this table and throttle you too.”

Seungyoun stares back at him with wide-eyed innocence. “You wouldn’t hurt me when I’m already _sad_, would you?”

“Shut up, Seungyounie.”

His best friend laughs, ducking to avoid the balled-up napkin Wooseok throws at his head.

Wooseok gets immense pleasure from carving the word ‘ASSHOLE’ into the guy’s car, a satisfying screech as he thinks about Seungyoun. Revenge _is _sweet. And it’s worth every penny, paying for the asshole’s paint job, just to see Seungyoun’s face that first time his best friend sees it, mouth wide open in laughter, doubled over clutching at his sides.

\---

Wooseok grabs everything Seungyoun needs to sleep on the couch, sheets and a pillow, grabbing the towel for good measure. He bites his lip as he watches his best friend go through the motions, clearly not quite all there, Seungyoun’s mind far away. The other boy doesn’t say anything about what has happened, and Wooseok knows better than to pry when Seungyoun gets like this. _Nothing a good night’s rest can’t fix. _

He digs through his stuff for his t-shirt from high school, squeezed into the back of his bottom drawer. It doesn’t fit him, so oversized that he drowns in it when he does put it on, a product of regret that he didn’t manage to grow any bigger, a fact that Seungyoun likes to remind him of often. But he hadn’t had the heart to toss it, the only thing left in his closet that fits comfortably over Seungyoun’s shoulders, and Wooseok keeps it with him for days like these.

Because Seungyoun always has a place with him if he needs it.

Wooseok hears the question but doesn’t respond, waiting until he hears Seungyoun’s deep breathing from falling asleep before he shifts at all, making sure not to wake his friend, gently pulling his arm out from underneath Seungyoun. The other boy looks peaceful while asleep, shoulders curled inwards towards Wooseok, the outline of his face barely visible in the dim moonlight streaming through Wooseok’s bedroom window, eyelashes dark again his pale skin. He brushes the hair falling over Seungyoun’s face to the side, planting a kiss on the other boy’s forehead.

_I think I could love you forever._

It takes him three tries to make two fried eggs exactly right, the way Seungyoun likes them, his first egg burnt to a crisp after he had stepped away to take an early morning business call, the second coming out regrettably without a runny yolk. He’s driving to work when he gets the text from Seungyoun.

_Thanks, Wooseokie._

\---

He feels like everything is closing in around him, the voice on the phone coming from far away as if he’s listening to her from within a fishbowl, the sound muffled and distant. Wooseok wonders if it is possible to be still alive if he’s stopped breathing, his heartbeat pounding uncomfortably in his chest, so loud he can hear it in his ears. And he can’t imagine Seungyoun the way she’s saying, can’t imagine him- He lets out the sob he doesn’t realize he’s holding in when the woman tells him Seungyoun is okay, loud and unrestrained and long, completely missing everything the woman says next, asking her to repeat herself frantically through his tears.

_Can you come see him?_

Of course he can, of course.

Wooseok doesn’t know how to face the other boy, his _supposed_ best friend, hand on the door to Seungyoun’s hospital room, frozen. Because he hasn’t _really _been Seungyoun’s best friend for a while now, the two of them having a falling out after Wooseok had tried to convince him to break it off with his boyfriend. Wooseok had seen it as an effort to save Seungyoun from himself, but his friend hadn’t. And what had followed was many months of Wooseok trying to make amends, phone calls, texts, even _emails_ for god’s sake, all to no avail. Seungyoun was stubborn, and he didn’t want to see or even hear from Wooseok.

_Maybe he still doesn’t want to see me._

The thought cuts deep, making him want to flee, run as far away as possible, the thought of Seungyoun rejecting him in person making him want to bolt. The only thing that keeps him there is remembering. Little Seungyoun who was always bigger than him and would pick fights with older kids to protect him. Long nights helping Seungyoun with his chemistry lab reports in high school, not the easiest task, and in return, the other boy had practically written all his English essays. Getting drunk at parties in university, Seungyoun piggybacking him home and eating late night delivery together, the fried chicken place only two blocks away. The hole he had felt after ringing Seungyoun’s doorbell for hours before the landlord had eventually come around to tell him that the other boy had moved out. _Where? _And the man had shrugged his shoulders. _Didn’t say._

But Seungyoun _needs _him right now, and that’s that.

Wooseok is angrier than he expects when they talk, and Seungyoun is sorrier than he expects. But Seungyoun doesn’t kick him out of the room, and Wooseok is determined to hold on to the other boy forever if that’s what it takes to keep his best friend _here._

He ends up buying yellow tulips for the first day, the florist telling him the color is for happiness, stands for the bonds of friendship. It takes a while for Wooseok to forgive his best friend completely, but he does. He knows it the day Seungyoun calls him Wooseokie, and he responds back with Seungyounie without a second thought.

\---

He stays up until Seungyoun falls asleep, the other boy sprawled out diagonally on his bed, taking up far too much space, wearing Wooseok’s t-shirt from high school, his boxers peeking out from under the hem of the shirt, a bright baby blue. Wooseok sighs, covering his best friend’s sleeping figure with a blanket.

Seungyoun hadn’t wanted to talk about it earlier, and Wooseok isn’t one to pry. _I’ll get it out of him tomorrow. _But just by judging from the renewed round of waterworks when he had mentioned kids, Wooseok has a sneaking suspicion. He had said it in the moment to be comforting really, but the thought of kids, of helping take care of kids with Seungyoun, of helping take care of _Seungyoun’s_ kids scares the fuck out of him.

Because he _wants _to.

And Wooseok knows he’s screwed.

Because he should _not _be thinking about playing house with his best friend, of yelling at their kids to stop playing in the backyard and come back for dinner. They both want two kids, a boy and a girl. And they’ll argue about which dog to get because Seungyoun likes big dogs, and Wooseok likes smaller ones, but Seungyoun will eventually give in because he always does for Wooseok. It makes his chest ache, just how clearly he can picture it, how easily it comes to mind, imagining a future that holds the two of them.

The thought scares the fuck out of him.

Seungyoun sends him a picture the next day, the snapshot of a drawing his best friend had done in second grade, an arrow pointing at the yellow scrawl along the side. _Wooseokie, look who I found. _And Wooseok nearly cries on the spot because he knows exactly what he had drawn on his paper too, the assignment tucked somewhere in a box at his parent’s house.

Them.

\---

Wooseok doesn’t sleep a wink after he hangs up, the sound of _Good night, Wooseokie _echoing in his head long afterwards. Goddamnit, Seungyoun. He gets up from the bed, taking a shower, hoping it’ll calm his racing thoughts. It doesn’t, just makes him more agitated, his body tired but his mind not letting sleep come. Wooseok grabs his wallet from where it’s sitting on the desk, climbing back into bed, flipping it open, sliding his index finger into the back most slot to pull it out. He stares wistfully down at the picture, a little bit worse for wear, the corner slightly bent, and that finally does the trick. Wooseok feels his heartbeat settling the longer he looks at it, his thumb brushing over the side, the two of them in their prom outfits, black and white.

Like wedding colors.

It seems like a long time ago.

Wooseok flips the picture over, the lettering in black Sharpie on the back. Seungyoun + Wooseok. In Seungyoun’s somewhat sloppy handwriting. He bites his lower lip, tracing the heart engulfing their names. He remembers that day. The other boy had been drunk their third year of university, searching through his wallet for money to tip the delivery boy after they had ordered fried chicken. Wooseok had been embarrassed, turning bright red when Seungyoun had seen the picture, the one he had taken out of his best friend’s photo album in high school. But the other boy had only laughed, playfully adding their names to the back, drawing a huge heart around them.

Maybe he hadn’t minded.

At some point, Wooseok falls asleep, or at least, he supposes he does since he wakes up to sunlight streaming into his room. He’s not sure whether last night was just his imagination, anxiously staring down at his phone all throughout the day to check if there are any messages from Seungyoun. Nothing. Wooseok checks his phone records, the call from Seungyoun in his incoming call log, from three in the morning, lasting only thirty two seconds. So he isn’t hallucinating.

He stumbles through his presentation, somehow managing to make it through the questions at the end without making a complete fool of himself. And Wooseok knows he appears frazzled up at the front, but he can’t help it, the thought of Seungyoun seeping into his mind. Everything over the next day and a half happens in slow motion, a fever dream.

Wooseok only stops at his place to drop off his suitcase, texting Seungyoun that he’s coming over, hoping that the other boy isn’t busy. He needs to see the other boy, bursting at the seams with questions, cursing Seungyoun in his head on the way over, his best friend’s spontaneity not the best thing for him, throwing him off-kilter sometimes. _Goddamnit, Seungyoun. _He doesn’t know what to say when Seungyoun opens the door, the other boy looking at him sheepishly, running his hand through his hair.

“…what’s going on?” Wooseok forgets all the other questions he had laid out carefully in his head on the way over.

Seungyoun’s brows knit together into a put-out expression. “Well, after you hung up, I was thinking it over, and yeah, it really _was_ a shitty dating proposal. Especially after how long we’ve known each other. So I was trying to do something for when you got back, something nice, you know?” The taller boy sighs, and Wooseok feels his heart skip a beat. “So I thought I’d make us dinner and stuff.” He stares as Seungyoun pats his hands over the apron, flour everywhere. “Turns out dessert is harder than it looks.”

Wooseok feels his throat close up, the threat of tears pricking the back of his eyes. “Why didn’t you text me all weekend?”

Seungyoun gives him a bewildered look. “You yelled at me when we talked saying you had a presentation to give. I just figured it would be better not to bother you since you had work to concentrate on.”

Suddenly, it’s too much, everything coming out of him at once in a flood of tears. Wooseok buries his face in the other boy’s chest, throwing his hands around Seungyoun’s waist. “Seungyounie, you’re so stupid. So, so stupid.” He starts crying harder as Seungyoun pulls him tightly into a hug, the taller boy’s arms draped over his shoulders. “You’re going to get flour all over you, Wooseokie.”

“I don’t care.”

And somehow Seungyoun knows exactly what to do when he cries.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, kudos, and feedback are always appreciated!
> 
> Twitter: [@sidestickienote](https://twitter.com/sidestickienote)  
CuriousCat: [@sidestickienote](https://curiouscat.qa/sidestickienote)


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